Danskcolin: Saturday January 15th 2022

08:00 A mad scramble to get out of bed for Lois and me so we're in time for our weekly zoom call at 9 am with Sarah, our daughter, who lives in Perth, Australia, with Francis and their 8-year-old twins Lily and Jessie.

Francis is out playing golf, which is good, because it's good for his back problems - it's slightly cooler today down there, only in the 80's F, so he's taking the chance. Next week it'll be over 100 again, so now is the time! The girls are tired but we get a few words with them - they've been out to the park with their friends Samara and Giana, followed by a dip in their pool, so they're pretty exhausted, bless 'em!

We have a nice chat with Sarah. She's pretty tired too. She's finished her first week back at the job after the 2-week Christmas break, but she had to hit the ground running at the heating and cooling firm where she's the accountant.

The girls are not due back at school till the beginning of February, but Sarah and Francis may keep them at home until they've had their second COVID jab, which may be delayed. The State Government in Western Australia screwed up with ordering sufficient supplies of the vaccine apparently.

Mark McGowan, the State Premier, is still saying he's going to open up the state borders at the beginning of February, which everybody there thinks is crazy. Why persist with that plan when he's got every excuse to change his mind, what with the omicron variant now making big inroads into the country.

What madness !!!!

And the population of the state is worried - they've started panic-buying items like toilet rolls again - what madness (again) ! Luckily Francis is the kind of guy who anticipates these things, so the family have got plenty. I'm not suggesting that he thereby personally contributed to the shortage haha !!!! And of course, I myself would never think of stockpiling such essential supplies! [You've got a nerve to say that! - Ed]

Now that the family have moved into Tapping, in the Perth suburbs, Francis can grow his own fruit and veg without worrying about kangaroos stealing it all. The twins tell us that at their former address in Lower Chittering, they had their own little garden plot where they planted flowers, but the kangaroos ate the lot, as well as biting completely through the trunk of a fruit tree.

What a crazy planet we live on !!!!!

10:00 The call ends and Lois and I set to work swabbing down this week's delivery of groceries from Budgens, the convenience store in the village.

It's not that I'm not very busy with priority tasks haha, but I do make a particular point of making myself useful [???? - Lois] later in the day by rationalising a list of the items we order the most from Budgens, so as to avoid snafus in the ordering process in future. Lois annotates the list with some suggestions for additional items.

Will this list be useful, or is it so long as to be cumbersome? Well, we'll see - fingers crossed !!!!

16:00 Tea on the couch and a currant bun each. I look at my smartphone and I'm glad to see that it's been found to be healthy to wear socks in bed, because you fall asleep faster. Who knew that?

This is reassuring to read, because both Lois and I have both taken to wearing bedsocks this winter for pretty much the first time ever. Maybe we're becoming a little "nesh"? I'm not sure, but perhaps we should be told, and quickly!

According to the health.howstuff webpage, It turns out that "the palms of your hands and soles of your feet are the body's most efficient heat exchangers, since they are hairless and less insulated than other skin surfaces. Researchers have shown that warming the feet before going to sleep using a warm foot bath or by wearing socks promotes vasodilation, which in turn lowers the body's core temperature faster than going to sleep with cold, bare feet...."

"... and the temperature difference between the surface skin of your extremities and your abdomen (known by sleep geeks as the distal-proximal skin temperature gradient or DPG) is the strongest indicator of your likelihood of falling asleep faster. Stronger even than hypnosis or popping a melatonin supplement before bed."

Socks also make it easier to have an orgasm, according to the study. We're thinking of passing that information on to Jean, Anne Reid's character in the "Dinnerladies" sitcom, after her famous response to HR dynamo Philippa (played by Celia Imrie). Dinnerladies was a sitcom from 20 years ago, all about kitchen staff who prepared and served food at a factory cafeteria in the North of England.

Jean (played by Anne Reid) in the sitcom "Dinnerladies"

Tremendous fun !!!!!

[How many times do I have to tell you, Colin, that the "Dinnerladies" sitcom is only a story. Jean isn't a real person. I expect Anne Reid, the actress who plays her, has tons of orgasms, with or without socks! - Ed]

What a crazy world we live in !!!!!

20:00 We watch TV, a documentary on the life and career of actor and film-star, Richard Harris.

Another drunk star! And Irish as anything, but he played all sorts of roles of various nationalities.

To me, however, he always sounded a little bit Irish - he never totally mastered the so-called "dark" sound of the letter "L", which was a giveaway. The Irish don't really use that sound, and they stick to the "light" sound. For example the L in "light" is pronounced in standard British English with the "light" L, while the L in "bowl" is pronounced with the "dark" sound. See? Simples!

Lois and I are history buffs, so we remember Harris most clearly in the title role of the film Cromwell (1970).

In this clip we see him coming to arrest King Charles (played by Alec Guinness), after the Parliamentarian forces had defeated the Royalists in the Civil War (1642-1651).

The historical figure of Cromwell remains a bit of a bogey figure in Ireland, so it was odd to see Harris taking on the role, but this was typical of him - he liked to take on challenges, and act against type wherever he could.

And even when he was playing Cromwell he sounds a bit Irish to this reviewer, at least! [I don't think you're entitled to call the stuff you cobble together a "review"! - Ed]

What madness!

Strangely enough, Richard's first wife was somebody in my mother's family tree - Elizabeth Rees-Williams, a woman as Welsh as anything haha!

The marriage lasted 10 years, and his relationship with Elizabeth was said to be incredibly passionate. They had 3 children, but she divorced him in the end - the documentary speculates whether she found it hard to put up with Richard's drinking.

Harris briefly also achieved fame as a singer in 1968, with the Jimmy Webb composition "MacArthur Park", a song Lois can't stand. I don't have strong feelings about it, but I agree that it may not have been one of Webb's better lyrics, and, on reflection, maybe he should have left out the bits about the cake and the icing. However I'm going to let that one slide because two of Webb's other songs, "Galveston" and "Wichita Lineman" we think of a bit as "our songs" from the early days when we first hooked up.